Sweet Potato

This is a story that has intrigued lots of people over lots of time – and is constantly regurgitated. It is the archaeological problem of how the sweet potato, a plant from South America, came to be dispersed across the Pacific islands of the Polynesians, many thousands of miles away – see  http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/01/clues-to-prehistoric-human… … and this says it all. A genetic study that was used to trace the origin of Pacific sweet potatoes back to Peru and Ecuador. This means either Polynesian sailors reached the shores of South America or they met somewhere in the Pacific basin, Easter Island perhaps.